The code for this recipe is available at https://github.com/dev-cafe/cmake-cookbook/tree/v1.0/chapter-06/recipe-05, including a C++ example. The recipe is valid with CMake version 3.5 (and higher), and has been tested on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.
The goal of this recipe is similar to the previous one, but the starting point is different; our plan is to read the version information from a file, rather than setting it inside of CMakeLists.txt. The motivation for keeping the version in a separate file, outside of CMake sources, is to allow other build frameworks or development tools to use the information, independent of CMake, without duplicating the information in several files. One example of a build framework that you might like to employ in parallel to CMake is the Sphinx documentation framework, generating documentation and deploying...